Abramoff ties cloud Schaffer's '99 fact-finding trip

Bob Schaffer's campaign says the ex-lobbyist didn't sway a look at factories in the Mariana Islands.

During their 1999 visit to the Mariana Islands, Bob Schaffer and his wife, Maureen, visited historical sites and met with clients of Preston-Gates, Jack Abramoff s firm. They also tried parasailing, above. (Courtesy Papers of Congressman Bob Schaffer, CSU Archives and Special Collections)

Just before boarding a plane to the Mariana Islands in 1999, then-Congressman Bob Schaffer announced he was embarking on a fact-finding mission to get to the bottom of repeated allegations of labor abuse in the American protectorate.

"I plan to walk right into those factories and living quarters to see for myself what conditions exist," Schaffer said in a news release in August of that year.

What he didn't say was that the trip was partly arranged by the firm of now-

jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who represented textile factory owners fighting congressional efforts to reform labor and immigration laws on the islands and who was being handsomely paid to keep the islands' cherished exemptions.

Bob Schaffer, accompanied by his wife, said he visited more than 20 textile factories during
the trip to investigate claims of labor violations and found problems in only one. He also described
the protectorate's guest-worker rules as a "model" for the U.S. immigration system. (Courtesy Papers of Congressman Bob Schaffer, CSU Archives and Special Collections)

Schaffer and his wife stayed for free at a palm-studded beach resort and, besides factories, also toured historical sites and met with clients of Preston-

Gates, Abramoff's firm, according to a copy of the trip's agenda archived in Schaffer's congressional papers.

He left believing that allegations of widespread abuse were largely unfounded — blaming them on Big Labor's efforts to shut down a booming textile industry allowed to use the "Made in USA" label but dependent on tens of thousands of imported workers.

In a recent interview with The Denver Post, the Republican candidate for Colorado's open Senate seat described the protectorate's guest-worker program as a "model" lawmakers could use as they overhaul the U.S.

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immigration system.

"At its base it is a union fight that has beentaking place there," Schaffer said in a recentinterview about what he found on the islands. "Iinsisted that it be a real investigation, which it was," he said, noting that he visited more than 20 factories and found serious problems in only one.

Nine years later, the trip has become a campaign issue: It has left Schaffer defending a guest-

worker program criticized in more than a decade of government reports and journalistic exposés; and it links him to what Abramoff later boasted was an incredibly successful lobbying effort to quash reform by cashing in on ties to key House Republicans, including those on the House Resources Committee, on which Schaffer sat.

"You have to put this in context"

Trips paid for by lobbyists and other advocates — even to exotic locales and accompanied by spouses and staff — are far from illegal; in fact, they are a Washington mainstay. In about 5-1/2 years ending in June 2005, lawmakers, their families and staffs took 23,000 trips worth $50 million, according to a study by the Center for Public Integrity.

But Democrats have jumped on this trip as a symbol of a brand of bare-knuckled politics that gave lobbyists disproportionate influence in directing policy when Republicans ran Congress.

"Given that many Republican members, including Tom DeLay, Bob Ney and Conrad Burns, have lost their seat or gone to prison based on their association with this criminal, it's pretty remarkable that Schaffer seems to be proud of his association with these sleazy Abramoff-sponsored junkets," said Taylor West, a spokeswoman for Schaffer's Democratic opponent, Mark Udall.

Schaffer spokesman Dick Wadhams said Democrats are trying to score political points out of a tenuous connection.

Opponents "are trying to leave the impression that Bob went gallivanting off to the Mariana Islands with Jack Abramoff, who Bob has never met, never talked to and wasn't even aware was around back then," Wadhams said.

"Preston-Gates was just another law firm at that time, like hundreds of others," Wadhams said. "You have to put this in context of what was going on then."

Forced abortions, safety woes cited

At heart of the issue is the islands' massive textile industry, which is exempted from the U.S. minimum wage as well as most American immigration laws. The Northern Marianas economy is built on thousands of workers from China, the Philippines and Bangladesh, some of whom pay labor recruiters as much as $7,000 to land a job on U.S. soil.

A class-action lawsuit filed the year Schaffer toured the islands alleged that many of those workers lived in slum conditions, housed seven to a room in barracks surrounded by barbed wire designed to keep the workers in. Workers in some factories labored 12 hours a day, seven days a week, the suit alleged — without pay if they fell behind set quotas.

A U.S. Interior Department investigation found that pregnant workers were forced to get illegal abortions or lose their jobs. Some were recruited for factories but forced into the sex trade instead.

The islands' factories were cited by the U.S. Department of Labor more than 1,000 times for safety violations in the late 1990s.

"There were some examples of problems that we found, and we raised those with the equivalent of the attorney general," Schaffer said of his visit. But in many others, "the workers were smiling; they were happy."

Said Matthew Miller, spokesman for the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee: "The fact that (Schaffer) sided against the human rights of those workers, not just then, but still today, shows he was more interested in doing the bidding of the people who set up the trip than in actually investigating abuses."

At the time, those alleged abuses and a push by the Clinton administration led to a flurry of congressional action. Several bills passed the Senate that would have brought the islands' factories under stricter American laws, but the legislation failed in the House.

Hired by factory owners and the government of the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, Abramoff and his firm were paid more than $11 million over nine years to fend off those efforts, according to reports.

In a 2001 memo to the Marianas governor meant to justify millions in fees, Abramoff singles out the relationships built with members of the House Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over U.S. protectorates. He points to the lavish trips for dozens of lawmakers and family members to build goodwill. And he says his connections ultimately scuttled dangerous legislation like the bill proposed by then-Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, which would have toughened the islands' labor and immigration laws.

"We then stopped it cold in the House," the memo boasts.

"In the end, this all-out public relations and lobbying blitz brought the (Mariana Islands) back from the brink of legislative disaster," the lobbyist wrote.

In some cases, Abramoff — who is now in prison for fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials, none of it related to the Mariana Islands — took efforts to obscure the scope of that effort and his firm's involvement.

Values Coalition paid for trip

Schaffer's $13,000 trip was paid for by the Orange County, Calif.-based Traditional Values Coalition, which Schaffer described as a religious group "concerned with human rights."

"Whatever involvement (Abramoff) had with Traditional Values Coalition wasn't known at the time," Wadhams said.

Later investigations have shown that in many instances, TVC — which claims to represent 43,000 churches — acted virtually as a political arm of Abramoff's lobbying operation.

In one 2000 case investigated by The Washington Post, TVC lobbied heavily against a bill restricting online gambling that would have hurt one of Abramoff's clients, eLottery Inc. In return, the report said, TVC received a check from the client for $25,000. Abramoff and TVC head Louis Sheldon had cooperated successfully so often that the now-jailed lobbyist began referring to him as "Lucky Louie," the newspaper reported. A TVC official didn't return a phone call requesting comment.

At the time, Schaffer's staff also flagged the role of Abramoff's firm in the Marianas trip. In an August 1999 memo, Schaffer was told that travel arrangements to the Mariana Islands had been made by Preston-Gates. Handwritten notes on the agenda point out that a lunch meeting was with several current or former clients of the firm, including the Saipan Garment Manufacturers Association and the Western Pacific Economic Council.

Wadhams said that Schaffer's conclusions about the islands' labor conditions were arrived at independently, regardless of what the trip's sponsors wanted him to see.

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